Apple on verge of announcing new iPhone, iPad and Mac sales records

Apple on Tuesday is likely to announce a blowout quarter in which it set a new sales records across three of its four major product lines without the aid of a lucrative holiday shopping season, newly released sales data implies.

An analysis by investment bankers at Piper Jaffray of NPD sales data released Monday leads the firm to predict sales of 22 million iPhones, 10 million iPads and 4.5 million Macs during Apple's fiscal fourth quarter of 2011, which ended on September 30th. Results are due following the close of the stock market on Tuesday.

Each estimate would translate to a new sales record for the Cupertino-based company, which last set a new benchmark for iPhone sales at 20.34 million and iPad sales at 9.25 million during the second quarter of 2011. Meanwhile, its all-time best quarter for Macs came during last year's holiday quarter at 4.1 million units.

"We recommend owning shares of AAPL into the September quarter results based on strong Mac sales and margin leverage on iPhone and iPad volume," analyst Gene Munster advised clients in a research note Monday. "More important than the September quarter, we believe the set up for the next 6 months is favorable based on likely investor optimism around the holiday quarter, the impact of iPhone 4S, and talk in early 2012 of iPhone 5 and iPad 3."

On average, analysts on Wall Street expect Apple to earn around $7.31 per share on revenues of $29.45 billion, driven by sales of 19.7 million iPhones, 11.4 million iPads, 4.4 million Macs and 7.4 million iPods.

On average, analysts on Wall Street expect Apple to earn around $7.31 per share on revenues of $29.45 billion, driven by sales of 19.7 million iPhones, 11.4 million iPads, 4.4 million Macs and 7.4 million iPods.

I'd much rather see the blogger's consensus (or damn near any one of the posters on this forum) than listen to anything that PJ has to say.

Apple will do extremely well for the quarter. Further the next quarter looks to be even better.

I couldn't resist! However one doesn't have to look to hard to see that Apple is doing extremely well. It would be shocking to find out that Apple is moving almost 3.5 to 4 million iPads a month though.

Apple will do extremely well for the quarter. Further the next quarter looks to be even better.

I couldn't resist! However one doesn't have to look to hard to see that Apple is doing extremely well. It would be shocking to find out that Apple is moving almost 3.5 to 4 million iPads a month though.

I think the bloggers might be a bit high for iPads... I was thinking around 10-11 million but somewhere in the neighborhood of 14-15 million for the holiday quarter. I like their iPhone number, though, and, of course, expect Apple to do even better during the holiday quarter with the addition of the 4S.

Apple will do extremely well for the quarter. Further the next quarter looks to be even better.

I couldn't resist! However one doesn't have to look to hard to see that Apple is doing extremely well. It would be shocking to find out that Apple is moving almost 3.5 to 4 million iPads a month though.

Apple sold 9.25 million iPads during the June quarter. Admittedly, the iPad 2 was supply-constrained at that time. So, I agree that if they did 3.5 to 4 million iPads a month during the Sept qtr, that would indeed be shocking.

Apple sold 9.25 million iPads during the June quarter. Admittedly, the iPad 2 was supply-constrained at that time. So, I agree that if they did 3.5 to 4 million iPads a month during the Sept qtr, that would indeed be shocking.

Look at Q4 vs Q3 last year. Q4 was about 30% higher in total revenues (most back to school sales are in Q4). If the same thing holds true this year, Apple would be around $36 B in revenues, so $33 B doesn't look like that much of a stretch.

"I'm way over my head when it comes to technical issues like this"Gatorguy 5/31/13

Good link, thanks for posting it. The table published with that article is worth studying. The first thing that jumps out at me is that the "bloggers" with the best track-record over the last three quarters are on the lower side this time (a bit above $8.00 EPS) and the more wild-eyed estimates of $9.00+ are coming from the ones with haven't been as close in the recent past. Anything less than $8.00 is probably going to be seen as a disappointment, so I'm not going to get real excited in advance.

The revenue numbers are all over the map, but you'll see the big difference comes mainly from iPhone sales forecasts. The really bullish estimates come from predictions of iPhone sales north of 26 million units, about 20% above the mean for the group. Can't say what justifies that sort of optimism, but this seems to be the number to watch tomorrow.